Lula sees a safe haven in the Senate amid Lira’s ultimatums – 06/07/2023 – Politics

The sedate and relaxed approval by the Senate of the provisional measure to restructure the ministries, last week, again showed the clear difference between the bases of support for the Lula government (PT) in the two Houses of the National Congress.

While in the Chamber of Deputies, led by Arthur Lira (PP-AL), the measure only passed after constant threat of rebellion and lengthy negotiations, some conducted personally by Lula, the House presided over by Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG) validated the proposal in the last day of the term in about two hours, without major surprises.

In the Chamber, the left has only about 130 of the 513 seats. The main political force is the centrão, a group of center and right-wing parliamentarians controlled by Lira and which has managed to gather around itself more than 300 votes in the sessions – whether for or against the government, depending on the situation.

Lira was the main supporter of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in Congress, being responsible for leading his support base. Even with Lula’s victory, the parliamentarian’s strength remained among his colleagues, which forced the new government to rule out launching a competitor in the dispute for the command of the House in February. Lira was re-elected comfortably.

The PT administration, however, tried to take back to itself the management of the distribution of positions and amendments to the Budget, today the main currency for obtaining support in the polls. But management and relationship problems soured the relationship.

Also contributing to this was the pressure from Lira and leaders of the centrão benches to regain control of the distribution of amendments.

The Chamber has already defeated the government in overturning changes made by Lula in the area of ​​sanitation and in approving the so-called temporal framework for the demarcation of indigenous lands. In both cases the defeats came packaged in more than 300 of the 513 votes.

Lira also installed three CPIs, one of them dominated by Bolsonarists and which targets the MST (Landless Rural Workers Movement), allied with the government.

The president of the Chamber has also been a public critic of the political articulation of the Planalto Palace, which he points out as the government’s main problem, in addition to being the protagonist of a noisy regional rivalry against Senator Renan Calheiros (MDB-AL), a supporter of Lula.

Just last week, Lira and Lula spoke by phone and, after a long afternoon and night of negotiations, the president of the Chamber led a movement to gather the votes for the approval of the MP.

The comfortable score, 337 votes to 125, was accompanied by open ultimatum messages to the government.

In free translation, either Lula gives in to the demands of the president of the Chamber and his surroundings, which include not only amendments, but control of ministries and federal positions, or Lula will continue to face turbulence in the House.

This Monday (5), Lira met with Lula. After the meeting, new messages to Planalto. “I think the warning that was given [sobre] the difficulties that occurred last week were a good message for the government to recompose its course”, said Lira to CNN Brasil.

He also stated in the same interview that Lula set up his ministry thinking about accommodating former governors who were elected to the Senate — and that in this scenario the Chamber was underrepresented.

“Trying to occupy there perhaps in a more administrative capacity of the experience of each one. But the fact is that the Chamber was under-represented in this situation. Or represented by decisions that did not belong directly to the parties”, he said.

Last week, Lula spoke directly with at least one other deputy, the leader of the União Brasil bench, Elmar Nascimento (BA). The acronym has three ministries in the government, but Elmar aligns himself with Lira and the dissatisfied wing of the party, not least because he was vetoed for a ministerial position by the PT in Bahia.

The Senate presents a less hostile scenario to the Planalto.

The House is presided over by a politician who kept his distance and on several occasions proved to be a brake on Bolsonarism in the past government.

In addition to Rodrigo Pacheco, the Senate houses one of the main parliamentarians included in the distribution of ministries by Lula, the former president of Casa Davi Alcolumbre (União Brasil-AP).

The MP’s approval of the restructuring of the Esplanada in the Senate, by 51 votes to 19, showed this scenario. Only two senators from grassroots parties voted against the government, Bolsonarist Samuel Araújo (PSD-RO) and former Lava Jato sheriff Sergio Moro (União Brasil-PR)—one of Lula’s main foes.

The Senate has also shown other examples of greater alignment with the Planalto.

Senators, for example, have held back the vote on the decree that overturns part of the changes made by Lula in the sanitation framework, which has allowed the government’s political articulators to negotiate changes to lessen the defeat suffered in the Chamber.

In the case of the timeframe, there is an expectation that there will be a slow process, with the matter going through thematic commissions and new technical analyses. Thus, it would not be appreciated before the return of the Federal Supreme Court’s judgment on the subject – scheduled for this Wednesday (7).

The text advanced in the Chamber as a strategy by Lira and the ruralist group to anticipate the judgment of the STF, since the trend in the court is that the milestone is overturned.

The thesis of the temporal frame, defended by the Frente Parlamentar da Agropecuária, determines that indigenous lands must be restricted to the area occupied by the peoples on the date of enactment of the Federal Constitution of 1988.

The indigenous people refute the idea and argue that, according to the Constitution, they are entitled to their original territories, not limited by the date of the Constitution’s enactment.